Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 622: Letters of Recommendation

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“Are we beginning again to tell you how good we are? Some people need to bring letters of recommendation with them or ask you to write letters of recommendation for them. But the only letter of recommendation we need is you yourselves!”

It’s hard to know how old the idea of a letter of recommendation is, but I suspect that it goes all the way back to the beginning of writing and when one person would move from one tribe to another and needed an introduction to be able to join and be accepted into another tribe or clan. We ask people to write us letters of recommendation so that we can have the back-up that we are are who we say we are and that we are able to accomplish what we say we can, or at least have history to be able to substantiate this. The best letters of recommendations are the ones that are from the most recent people with whom we have worked. These letters don’t get better with time, so if you haven’t updated your files lately, you should. Social media sites like LinkedIn and others also allow for us to collect recommendations and “endorsements”. These are good too, but the best is when we can get someone to take the extra time and effort to write something directly to the person who is evaluating and assessing us for the next role. This shows two things; 1)you are important enough to the reference for them to stop what they are doing to help, and 2) that you are this interested in the position to have the letter tailored and targeted. Both are good things and could be the difference between you and another candidate.

We actually are writing our recommendation letters for ourselves each and every day. If we think about it, there is no better recommendation than the lives that we lead, the examples that we set, and the role models that we are, or that we aren’t. This is what Paul was getting at in his own letter to the Church at Corinth. He was saying to the people that they need not send him letters of recommendation, all they have to do is to continue to be themselves and do the work that they were doing and that would speak for itself. This is so true. If we are doing the work that we are supposed to do and we are doing it well, then those actions will speak volumes louder than any words on paper. It doesn’t mean we won’t need that letter some day, but let’s think that we each and every day, like today, we are writing our own letter in real time!

Reference: 2 Corinthians 3:1-2 (New Living Testament)